Tag Archives: esotericism

Leo Strauss, in his 1952 book, Persecution and the Art of Writing, argues that great writers tend to write with multiple levels of meaning. Often writers have an exoteric message to avoid displeasing the king, censors, or fashion of the times. At the same time, they maintain an esoteric message concealed within irony, paradoxes, and even deliberate self-contradiction. Read more …

Elsewhere (in La Destra, in May 1972), we have discussed the necessary relationship of an authentic, non-makeshift Right with the concept of Tradition. In the sense discussed there, references to authors with a traditional orientation may be useful in dealing with certain complex problems. Here, however, we wish to provide an account of the ideas of René Guénon (1886-1951), who was regarded as the proponent of “integral Traditionalism.” Read more …

In contrast with the mediocre majority of mankind, there is the rare genius. Schopenhauer’s ruminations on the tragic loneliness of the genius, no doubt in part autobiographical, are some of the most touching and the most consoling. There is reason to think Hitler sympathized with and perhaps attempted to live up to the model of the Schopenhauerian genius. Read more …

Although chapter 3 of Moses the Egyptian is entitled “Before the Law: John Spencer as Egyptologist,” the last quarter of the chapter is devoted to Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), one of Spencer’s colleagues at Cambridge and a leading member of the Cambridge Platonists.